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Belladonna
Thirty-Five years ago, a squishy egg hatched in the thicket of the newt kin swamps. The child that emerged had the skin the color of the ripest orange and a laugh that would force the Juju to bring the rains during a drought. Everyone had told her parents that she was a gift from the beyond. The Juju must have chosen her for something special. Her parents raised her in a simple house off the water and she would spend her day learning curses, studying plants, and fishing with her twin brother, Nightshade. Her first tragedy happened when she was thirteen and wizards from a guild showed up to the swamp. They called it an “expedition for magical research”. Her parents, ever cautious of newcomers, placed a curse on them so that they could not see their children. The wizards found out and decided it a punishable offence and the sentence was death. Belladonna watched her as her parents were blown to tiny bits in front of her as she was held back by magical chains she could not see. When they finally left after “justice was served’ she ran into the swamp. This where, at the end of a month, she performed her first Tell Fortune, asking the Juju what she should be doing next. Now that her parents were gone there was no one to watch over and guide her. The Juju would be her master, her savior. Unlike her parents, the Juju would never die. She returned home to find her brother had spent the whole month in the house cleaning it up and gathering supplies. Belladonna smiled, knowing the Juju guided her brother to pack for their journey to Orelisle. She has been given a vision, the outside world was in need of them. There was nothing holding them to the swamp, so the two siblings gathered what little they had and left. The world was waiting for them. Belladonna and Nightshade spent most of their time walking from town to town and reading whatever they could get their hands on. This place was new, especially the plants and food. One time in a village near the Binturian border Belladonna got a blood infection and spent a week on her deathbed before her brother was forced to find a healer and spend everything they had to heal her. Nobody in the area had bothered learning herbal medicine and the pair were new to the forest and knew nothing of the plants life. They just chose to rely on the magic of these spell casters. Instead of finding people wanting to explore and understand their world and improve on it, they were relying on magic or people who used magic. Sure, they were scholars who would understand people and books, but no one who bothered to find if a disease could be cured without magic and if other power sources could be used. The only reprieve they saw from these ideas was in the Ivoran forest. The gnomes there spent a lot of time engineering and math. Nightshade actually befriended a family of these gnomes and the twins decided to settle down for two years when they were fifteen so Nighshade could learn become an apprentice and learn about this new kind of “science” as these people called it. During that time, Belladonna wrote and talked about the reliance on magic with her new friends. Most spoke of magic as a treasure, something some people are born with and that it could do some wonderful things, like defend their villages. Belladonna wondered if something other than magic could be used to defend their home. While her brother learned engineering, she learned about the land and the extent of natural medicine. She also came across an old scientist who shared all his previous research on the bodies of the different species of Orelisle. He had wished for a way to bring the dead back to life, but the only way he knew of was with magic and even then, it needed to be within a certain time. The man recalls the story of how he couldn’t find a healer in time to save his daughter When the two left at seventeen he gave the newt kin girl the book he spent his life creating. He said he felt like she could do more with it then he ever could. The girl said she would never forget the old man. She never did. When the twins turned twenty, they came across Amerale. They stood in awe of the magnificent city before them, never having seen something so gorgeous in their whole lives. They discovered that it contained a wealth of knowledge and then decided to spend a few years within its walls. Belladonna tried becoming a witch doctor within the city to heal people without the aid of magic and she had become quite good at it. She offered prices lower than most other healers, so people began going to her instead of them. She had spent the last seven years studying and experimenting with the plants and Juju or Orelisle and found that many ailments had a more natural cure. As a result, she was often tracked down by the government and street healers because they were competition. When they were twenty-five their house was found, and burned down by a druid and the they only managed to save a few books. Their parents medicine book that they’ve been adding to, Nightshade’s book of schematics, and Belladonna’s book of Juju research. She might have spent much of her time exploring her world, but she also didn’t ignore her natural gift of communing with the Juju. She thought her training and experimentation would come in use one day. The twins decided to return home after this last mishap and were welcomed with open arms by their old community. Nightshade would still make bi annual trips to Orelisle for certain supplies, but other than that they would spend their time researching in a more permeant peace. Nightshade would spend his time trying to discover new power sources while Belladonna focused her energy on the natural world. She spent most of her time on physiology and Juju. She meditated in the swamp every day. She was convinced that she could use her skills with the Juju to help her cure the magical ailment the world was inflicted with. According to Belladonna and Nightshade, magic had forced the world to stop moving forward. Nobody realized that they become as strong as magic because magic was some dominant in the world outside the swamp. Science and progress could not come to a world that relies itself on magic so Belladonna decided to spend her life to prove to them that science was just as powerful as magic could be. To do that she needed to bring the dead back to life. She experimented with bodies and the other newt kin caught on, and labeled her as a mundane necromancer and disrespecting the dead. She was effectively cast out of the swamp at thirty-three. Her brother chose to come with her in banishment. Belladonna couldn’t see why they would want to live in a world that chose to exist in the past perpetually. Upon returning to Orelisle, Nightshade gave his sister his final creation, a sword of electricity, not powered by magic. He had spent the last ten years perfecting the sword and it could stun an enemy and send a powerful current through their body, double if they were wearing army. He wasn’t a good fighter or particularly gifted with Juju so he felt his sister was better suited for it. Nightshade said this sword was called Tonitrus. This was the name of the gnome village the two lived in so many years ago. That night he was killed by drunk wizards because he was in their way. Magic no longer was just keeping the world at bay. It was actively killing the world and oppressing people who didn’t have magic or any way to defend themselves from this scourge. She began searching into ways to rid the world of magic. She knew she couldn’t convince the people to move to science and Juju, so she would have to force it. Even the gnomes hadn’t realized how evil and disgusting magic really was. This was during the time she began to hear a voice in her head. “I can help you eliminate magic, just ask the Juju what the future looks like” After the Planar War Belladonna needed to know the future of the world. She needed a powerful, long, and painful Tell Fortune. But she needed time and sacrifices to ask this powerful of a question. Over the past two years she began applying her Juju theories to the test and had found some pride and reprieve from guilt that she was correct. Before the constellations fell from their heavenly home, she cursed all the Giants of the Overbright to attack the Dovekin. The violence and loss of life made her Tell Fortune longer and through that experience she saw the future of the world. She saw what the great monks of the first civilization saw, what magic could and will do. All she saw was suffering and a land frozen in time. Magic would become the end of it all and recent memories of the planar war reinforced her vision. After running into the binturian party, Belladonna agreed to become a servant to the god of madness for the sole reason that he wanted to drain the world of magic. He was made and guided even the Juju, and she was destined to serve the Juju. With that she was reborn. She would even let her heart be caged by a being called Madness. As time went on she began to miss her heart. She became cold and her body started to fall apart. She stitched herself together with the parts of others. She began to lose her love of non-magical people. Madness’s influence began to creep into her mind and she murdered almost all the adults of the newt kin to get rid of “undesirable ideas on the future.”. She spared children so they could be raised without magic and instead to study science and the world. She soon developed a curse that would take away one’s magical ability. Magic wouldn’t be taken from the world swiftly without a care. It would be done deliberately and with purpose. The ends will justify the means. Her silence assured fear in others and during this time she managed to create life without magic. However, it was too late to save her brother, but never too late to save the world. Both her and Madness wanted a world without magic. Any price was necessary to acquire freedom for the future generations, even her own heart, soul, and brother. However, madness always lies.